Blood Magic: Matthew Cook

Book Description: With the power of her blood magic--a dark sorcery even she does not understand--Kirin avenges her twin sister's murder. Alone, except for the grotesque but loyal creatures she can create from souls and dead flesh, she fights to survive. When the inhuman Mor crawl up from their underground world to wage war, Kirin serves as scout and archer -- and finds comfort in the arms of Jazen Tor, a sergeant in the Imperial Army. But it is beautiful, gentle Lia Cho, who can call lightning from the sky, who teaches Kirin about herself. Even with Lia as an ally, Kirin must still confront the hatred of her own kind and, together, they must face the seemingly invincible Mor.

It's never a good sign when the first step of reviewing a book is to determine whether "chauvinism," "sexism," or "misogyny" is the most accurate description.

Cook's use of language is a trifle stilted, but not terrible. The world is your fairly typical fantasy fare - renaissance faire technology, magic and monsters. The humans are at war with the nigh-unstoppable monsters, and the heroine/narrator of the story, Kirin, uses a series of flashbacks to catch us up with her past. The twist is that she uses black magic to sprout undead creatures from the bodies of the recently deceased, and she kills by sucking the blood out of her victims...with her mind. If you're into swords-n-sorcery fantasy with enthusiastically graphic gore and weird sexual overtones, hey, this book is for you!

However, what really pissed me off is that even though Cook tries to paint Kirin as a smart, resourceful, free-thinking woman, she seems completely governed by (in no particular order): her uterus, bloodlust, and the voice of a dead relative who lives in her head. These are not generally the motivations of an independent woman.

Furthermore, Kirin justifies creating her undead warriors by theorizing that because she can't have children (or so she thinks), it's acceptable to "birth" the monsters. Of course, as soon as she actually gets pregnant, she becomes instantly repulsed by her own creations and is suddenly remorseful for all of her past misdeeds. And her intense desire for a child is inexplicably absent when it's convenient for the plot (see what happens when her sister's child is left in her care).

I suppose that Kirin's childbearing obsession is not all that surprising, given that the very first sentence of the author's own bio points out that after graduating, he "... wasted no time in beginning a family." So if you want the point of your book to the be the importance of family, that's fine. But this was a really weird, violent and ultimately nonsensical vehicle for that idea.

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ISBN-10: 0809572001
ISBN-13: 9780809572007
Publication Date: September 2007 by Juno Books
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